f

ADDRESS

MASSACHUSETTS HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY

DEDICATION OF HORTICULTURAL HALL,

MAY 15, 18 45.

BY GEORGE LUNT.

Boston:

PRINTED BY DUTTON AND WENTWORTH .
No. 37, Congress Street

1845.

63*

I_0rt o-

MASSACHUSETTS HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY,
Boston, May 17th, 1845.

At a meeting of the Society, held this day, it waa

Voted, That the thanks of the Society be presented to the Hon. George Lunt, of Newburyport,
for the truly poetical and highly classical Address, delivered by him, on the occasion of the dedication of
the New Hall of the Association.

Voted, That Messrs. Isaac P. Davis, Josiah Bradlee.and Stephen Fairbanks be a Committee to solicit
a copy for publication.

Attest,

EBENEZER WIGHT, Recording Secretary.

BOSTON, MAY 20th, 1845.

Hon. George Lunt,

Dear Sir,

The undersigned have the honor to communicate to you the annexed
vote of the Massachusetts Horticultural Society, requesting for publication, a copy of your Address,
delivered on the evening of the 15th instant.

In the performance of this pleasing duty, we gladly avail ourselves of the opportunity, to convey to
you our personal satisfaction with the excellent and appropriate sentiments so eloquently expressed :
and for the honor of the literature of our Country, and the good of the Society, which we represent, we
trust you will readily consent to the promulgation of an Address of such rare merit.

We are, with great esteem,

Your friends and obedient servants,

ISAAC P. DAVIS, 1

JOSIAH BRADLEE, > Committee.

STEPHEN FAIRBANKS, >

r

NEWBURYPORT, MAY 21, 1845.

Gentlemen,—

With a grateful sense of your kind appreciation of my performance, whose merits, whatever they
may be, must be attributed to my heartfelt interest in the subject, I have the honor to submit it entirely
to your disposal.

I remain, gentlemen.

With great respect,

Truly your friend and servant,

GEORGE LUNT.

I. P. Davis,

Josiah Bradlee,

Stephen Fairbanks, Esqes.

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ADDRESS.

Mr. President, and Gentlemen of the Society :

It is a touching, and to some of you, perhaps, familiar
incident related of a celebrated English traveller,* whose
genius and misfortunes have long closely allied him with
every human sympathy. He was engaged upon his first
adventurous enterprise into a distant and unknown land.
He had penetrated the interior solitudes of Africa. He
was in the midst of the vast deserts of a barbarous clime.
He was hundreds of miles away from the very outskirts
of civilization, and surrounded on every side by the beasts
of the wilderness, and by men scarcely less ferocious.
He had suffered every privation and every ill. He was
alone in the dismal waste, with a worn and failing body
and a sinking mind. It was while the chance of life
appeared a thing almost too hopeless for conjecture, and
a thousand natural emotions thronged upon his soul ;
while the present seemed to crowd into its narrow hour
the accumulated memories of all the past, and offered
him but the prospect of a miserable death upon the bar-
ren sands, for the home which he had left with such eager
and buoyant expectations, and the loved and lovely things
he was to behold no more ; it was at this moment of
despondency and distress, that an object caught his eye,

Park.

6

which, perhaps, from the heedless or the happy, would
scarcely have attracted a passing glance. It was a small
moss, of extraordinary beauty, in the process of germina-
tion ; and, as he contemplated the delicate conformation
of its roots and leaves, the thought forced itself irresisti-
bly upon his mind, that the same bountiful and eternal
Providence, which protected this minute but lovely object
in obscurity so complete, and in the region of perpetual
barrenness, could not be unmindful of one of his intelli-
gent beings, the highest in the order of intellectual crea-
tion. It was the reflection thus suggested which banished
his despair, and nerved his heart to those renewed efforts
which secured his eventual return to his native land.

There could be no more striking illustration than this
of the benevolent order of the universe ; which so often
vindicates itself under circumstances apparently fortui-
tous, by demonstrating the purpose and value of those
things, whose utility a cold philosophy had endeavored to
discover in vain. It were, indeed, too much to say, that
the minutest atom which floats in infinite space, or the
meanest flower that blows upon the bosom of nature,
have been created for no valuable end. If the purposes
of existence were less than they really are in the eye of
reason and enlightened philosophy, we might have been
subjected to a very different constitution of external na-
ture. To surround us merely with those things which
might minister to our actual necessities, were to deprive
our senses themselves of their very noblest attributes, and
to contract within the narrowest limits the circle of our
capacities and desires. Take from us, indeed, those love-
ly manifestations of the external world ; those sweet, and
graceful and glorious things, which tend much more, per-
haps, to the promotion of our present happiness, as well
as to the perfection of our immortal destiny, than all

7

which the world counts most worthy of its pursuit, —
and our minds were dark, and our hearts dead within us,
instead of kindling with the glowing earth, as, radiant
with brightness and beauty, she smiles to meet the em-
braces of the returning Spring.

The very savage, indeed, must derive some moral ele-
vation from the contemplation of external nature. For
his untutored soul, as well as for the mind of the most
cultivated student of the works of creation, that orient
pavilion, flushed with a thousand gorgeous and shifting
hues, from out whose dazzling portals issue the outgoings
of the morning; the deepened loveliness of that softer
heaven, which ushers universal nature to repose; the
changing year, as its advancing seasons ripen into mel-
lower beauty ; — yes, all and each, within the rudest re-
cesses of the primeval wilderness as well as amidst the
refinements of a more polished taste, in their turn have
given wing to a sublimer imagination, widened the sphere
of intellectual exertion, and dignified the reflections and
aspirations of the moral being. The Indian maiden, who
decks her jetty tresses with the wild flowers plucked by
the margin of the forest brook, drinks in from them the
same images of grace, fragility and beauty, which they
are fitted to inspire in the proudest bosom that beats in
regal halls ; where every silken tint that art has curiously
embroidered, and every radiant gleam that glitters from
clustered gems, were incomplete without these simpler
charms, furnished by the cheap provision of nature, yet
more resplendent in their freshness than the array of Solo-
mon in all his glory !

But if such be the universal influence of natural beau-
ty ; if over even the soul of a barbarian it exerts this in-
wrought power to charm the imagination and elevate the
mind ; surely, amidst the hourly cares which, in more

8

civilized life, press upon the hearts of men, they can find
no relief so easily attained, and, at the same time, so re-
freshing and salutary, as the contemplation of those lovely
things, which our common mother, for the common use
and entertainment of her children, hangs sparkling with
dew-drops upon every tree, or flings with bounteous pro-
fusion over her luxuriant bosom.

Whoever enters upon the attentive examination of these
objects, in the spirit of rational philosophy, will be certain
to attain a reward at least commensurate with his exer-
tions ; for if it acquire him no other possession, it will at
least bring him that priceless one of an innocent heart
and a gentle mind ; and a student of nature, who should
become sensual and debased, would present as strange an
anomaly as an undevout astronomer.

The human mind itself is indeed deeply imbued with
the spirit of love for natural beauty. Perhaps there is no
one who has so entirely lost the impress originally stamped
by the hand of God upon the soul of man, — no one who
is so thoroughly “ of the earth, earthy,” as to have lost
all conscious enjoyment of the glorious creation around
him, crowned by every revolving season with its own
peculiar magnificence and beauty. Of the tendency of
many of the great pursuits of life, when they are modi-
fied by no controlling influence, to render us sordid and
selfish, there can exist no doubt. The very refinements
of existence corrupt as well as polish. The human char-
acter insensibly dwindles amidst the pursuits of civilized
society. The range of our feelings becomes contracted
under the weight of the conventionalisms of life. The
sphere of thought itself grows narrower in the plodding
routine of daily occupations. Confined amongst the ways
and thoroughfares of populous existence, and man be-
comes almost necessarily assimilated, in thought and

9

habit, to those with whom he is associated. He conforms,
and, perhaps, degrades his being, by conformity with the
settled maxims and theories around him ; and often,

Like a drop of water,

That in the ocean seeks another drop,—

confounds himself, and loses the identity of his own pecu-
liar, and perhaps nobler characteristics.

Consider, then, the mother of the seasons in some of
her infinite manifestations. You wander into the fresh
fields and gather the flowers of spring. In crystal vases,
resting, it may be, upon sculptured marble, you cherish
these frail children of the sun and showers. You renew
them before they wither, and gaze with exquisite delight
upon their delicate texture and the manifold perfection of
their hues. They appeal forever to your inmost heart, as
silent mementos of all things sweet, and beautiful, and
pure. They are eloquent of perpetual suggestions to the
answering soul. They fill your mind more than all that
lives upon the canvass of the mightiest master. The
least and meanest of them all more satisfies your imagi-
nation than the choicest statue wrought by the divinest
hand. To your cultivated mind they address themselves
in their momentary beauty, like images of things more
perfect in immortal loveliness. They are emblems of the
affinities of your moral being with whatever is complete
in infinite glory beyond the skies. Like the eternal stars,
that, on the brow of midnight, assure us, with their un-
speakable effulgence, that Heaven and its hopes are yet
there, so these, the stars of earth, spring upon her verdant
bosom, the mute memorials of an inscrutable immortality.
In the humble dwelling-place of the poorest laborer, in
some crowded city’s dim alley, into which the golden
light of day pours scarcely one beam of all his abounding
flood, you may often discern some simple flower, which
2

10

indicates the longing of our more spiritual being ; which
recalls to the mind’s eye of the wearied man the green
fields of his boyish days, and impresses him again and
again, — oh, not in vain ! — with the gentler and purer
emotions of his childhood. They come upon him, amidst
the dust and heat, and perhaps the wretchedness, of his
daily lot, like outward manifestations of the inner spirit-
world. They are the signals of thoughts

Commercing with the skies.

They are like gleams of a fairer and brighter sunshine,
from realms “ beyond the visible diurnal sphere.”

The time does, indeed, come to all men, when they
would gladly escape from the crowd and confusion of
common life, and

Forth issuing on a summer's morn, to breathe

Among the pleasant villages and farms,

would forget the thronging cares which have exhausted
their hearts, in company with the lilies of the field , that
toil not , neither do they spin. It is, indeed, by influences
such as these that we acquire not only fresher impulses to
duty, but far higher and nobler principles of action. Ex-
perience, it is true, teaches us that the mere drudgery of
rural pursuits can have little effect in raising the private
or social condition of the man. To turn the verdant soil
for the mere sustenance of life, would as little impress his
mind with the true sentiment of his occupation, as the
gloomy grandeur of ocean enters into the soul of the tem-
pest-tost and weather-worn mariner. The rustic laborer
might forever follow his plough upon the mountain side,
and trample with heedless foot upon the brightest flowers,
that appealed with dewy eyes in train to his plodding
sensibilities ; and the village maiden, obeying those truer
and nobler instincts, inseparable, I believe, from every

11

woman’s heart, with every returning Spring, might gather
and weave them into her rustic coronal. But to fulfil
their highest ministry they must have become blended
with their kindred associations. They must have linked
themselves, as they have done, with the domestic, and
public and religious story of the world. Their sweet and
gentle names must have floated upon the voice of song.
They must have given language of eloquent significance
to the passionate impulses of the human heart. They
must have spoken of the fragility of life under that
sweetest and most soothing of all sad similitudes, — “ a
fading flower.” They must have crowned the wine-
cup amidst the revels of “ towered cities,” and mingled
with the sunny locks of the queen of May upon the vil-
lage green. They must have waved upon the brow of
the returning victor, wreathed their modest tints amongst
the tresses of the blushing bride, and reposed in pale and
tranquil beauty upon the marble bosom of death. They
must have proved their power to sound the secret well-
springs of our hearts, and to draw up the sweeter waters
beneath, hidden, as with a veil, by the intertangled sophis-
tications and falsehoods of the world. They must have
been won from their wild and unseen solitudes, and nur-
tured and cherished with a dear and reverent love.

But much as we love to meet them in their green re-
treats, on the fragrant meadow, by the rural road-side, or
in the wild recesses of the rocks, it is as the friends and
companions of our daily duties that we most welcome
their sweet and holy ministry. Nurtured by our own
hands, they become indeed the faithful solace of our cares,
and the rich reward of all our pleasant toil. And then
how more than strange is this wonderful result with
which beneficent Nature repays our fostering charge !
What miracle so marvellous, as this mysterious develop-

12

ment, which we so disregard, because we call it the com-
mon course and order of creation ! When the returning
season fills our hearts anew with its returning hopes, we
take the unsightly and insignificant seed. We bury it
out of our sight beneath the dark, insensate earth. The
dews and the showers fall upon what might well seem to
be its eternal bed. The sun reaches its secret resting
place with a vital and incomprehensible energy. It awa-
kens from its slumber, and no apparent elements of its
original conformation remain. It starts into being under
newer and ever-varying aspects, — till

from the root

Spring’s lighter the green stalk, from thence the leaves

More aery, last the bright consummate flower

Spirits odorous breathes. Par. Lost.

And then, what human philosophy is competent to ex-
plain the unseen cause, which, from elements apparently
so inadequate, brings up the slender and tapering stalk,
shoots forth the verdant leaf, and embellishes its lustrous
crown with inimitable purple, or the flowering gold !
What wonderful chemistry is this, which so filters the
moisture of the earth and the dew of heaven, and com-
bines and diffuses the just proportions of the vital air
through every intricate fibre, till it blushes in the bloom
of the queenly Rose, and makes the virgin Lily the em-
blem of purity and light! With what unerring skill
they are blended or contrasted in their infinite variety of
“ quaint enamelled dyes” ! With what exquisite order
and precision their gorgeous retinue appears, each at its
accustomed season, and gathers the successive harvest of
its transient glory !

Daffodils,

That come before the swallow dares, and take
The winds of March with beauty ; violets dim

13

But sweeter than the lids of Juno’s eyes
Or Cytherea’s breath j pale primroses,

That die unmarried ere they can behold
Bright Phoebus in his strength ; * *

* * * bold oxlips, and

The crown-imperial j lilies of all kinds,

The flower-de-luce being one. Winter’s Tale.

Of all the gentle and welcome company, not one but lifts
its starry cup or hangs its clustering bells upon the spiral
stem. And oh, still stranger transformation, when this
treasured darling of an hour, so rich in glowing charms
and fragrant with delicious sweetness, yields to the immut-
able law of its destiny ; refolds the vital principle of its
being within the shapeless and scentless husk, and flings
itself once more to its wonted repose in the embraces of
the fulfilling earth !

It were, perhaps, too much to allege that for our use
and pleasure alone were created these loveliest objects of
the natural world, so curious in contrivance, so matchless
in surpassing beauty, so eloquent in the lessons of uner-
ring wisdom. Of the original inevitable relation between
things beautiful and things morally good, we may form
some not irrational conjecture. That they are sadly dis-
joined, under our present condition, we well know. But
if, as we are told,

Millions of spiritual creatures walk the earth,

Unseen, both when we wake and when we sleep, — Par. Lost.

it were not unreasonable to conclude, that, to their celes-
tial apprehension, the lovely aspects of creation may afford
a delight commensurate with the primal relations between
all things in themselves excellent ; that to them, as to the
Infinite Author, the loveliness of creation may seem very
good. Nor are we capable of understanding how far the
inferior orders of being are susceptible of enjoyment from
the same sources with ourselves. That their organs are

14

affected to some extent by the same sights, as well as
sounds, which address themselves to our own sensations,
and that they do appreciate some of the properties of the
vegetable world, we have the most abundant evidence.
That the “ grazed ox” would trample, in the fragrant
meadow, upon the springing blossoms, that fill the soul
of the merest child with irrepressible delight, is no less
true, than that the bee lingers upon the flowery bank, in
pursuit of his sweet repast, or that the wild bird trills his
spontaneous song where dews are brightest, amongst
leaves and flowers. Yet we may be sure, that to us
alone of the common dwellers upon earth is given the
power of justly appreciating these munificent gifts of the
benevolent Author of all things. To us alone has been
afforded the faculty of deriving the most innocent enjoy-
ment from their cultivation and care ; and, since the first
habitation assigned to our common parents was indeed a
Paradise,* we may conclude, that in the indulgence of no
other of our pleasures do we so nearly approach their
happy and sinless state.

There can be, indeed, scarcely a change more striking
than to leave the noisy streets of the “ dim and treeless
town” for the pleasant garden, stretching away under the
broad delicious sunshine, in the bright and open air. Of
all the ordinary vicissitudes of life, I am aware of none
which involves a revolution so absolute. We quit the
sights which offend us at every turn, and enter upon a
scene affluent in all things, which please the eye and re-
fresh the imagination. Instead of the tumult and intem-
perate haste of the crowded haunts of men. we rest with
the repose of nature, broken only by murmurs that are
delicious, and the warbled music of the skies. For the
suffocating steam of crowded life, we inhale ineffable per-

* nAPA'AEISOE, a garden.

15

fumes, that float upon the breath of flowers. We forget
the debasing competitions of wealth and fame, and enter
into the innocent pursuits of the guileless creatures of the
air. Instead of the too often profitless companionships of
society, we meet ourselves. We become the companions
of our own inner thoughts, and the things which inter-
vene between our hearts and heaven are those which only
link us more closely to its infinite aspirations. That
voice within speaks to us like a trumpet, whose whis-
pers were almost inaudible through the tumult and hurry
of life. The heart which was harder than the nether
millstone in the cave of Plutus, softens and expands to
the just proportions of its nature, beneath the liberal sun-
shine and under the broad and bounteous atmosphere.
And still, like that primal Eden, though shorn and dimin-
ished of those heavenly flowers,

That never will in other climate grow,

it is yet the faint image of the original paradise, and the
only earthly region instinctive with the spirit of an Al-
mighty and universal Love. It is here, indeed, that

* * o’er the flower

His eye is sparkling and his breath hath blown,

His soft and summer breath, whose tender power
Passes the strength of storms in their most desolate hour.

A populous solitude of bees and birds
And fairy-form’d and many-colored things,

Who worship him with notes more sweet than words,

And innocently open their glad wings,

Fearless and full of life $ the gush of springs,

And fall of lofty fountains, and the bend
Of stirring branches, and the bud which brings
The swiftest thought of beauty, here extend,

Mingling, and made by Love, unto one mighty end. Byron.

It is from places like these that the benefactors of the
world have derived the strength of their generous impul-

16

ses. It is here that statesmen, and poets and philosophers
have retired, and moulded those divine conceptions which
have resulted in the advancement and elevation of man-
kind. It was upon such a retreat that that noblest Ro-
man,* styled by onef “the most wise, most worthy,
most happy and the greatest of all mankind,” entered
after he had made his native city the mistress of the
world. In that venerated solitude, to which many a pil-
grim step turned in the succeeding ages of his country’s
history, wiser than he who, in later times,

Exchanged an empire for a cell, —

he forgot alike his glories and their cares, and conceived
that illustrious sentiment, which could never have arisen
in an ignoble or ambitious mind, Nunquam minus solus
qudm cum solus. From the rose-beds of Psestum, rich
in the bloom of their double harvest, J was wafted that
breath of flowers, which ages ago stirred and mingled
with the sublimest of human emotions in “ Rome’s least
mortal mind from that Psestum, whose fragrant odors
yet faint upon the summer gale, amidst the ruins of
man’s less durable achievements ; that Paestum, where
still

The air is sweet with violets, running wild
Mid broken pieces and fallen capitals j
Sweet as when Tully, writing down his thoughts,

Those thoughts so precious and so lately lost,

(Turning to thee, divine philosophy,

Ever at hand to calm his troubled soul,)

Sailed slowly by two thousand years ago,

For Athens 3 when a ship, if northeast winds

Blew from the Psestan gardens, slacked her course. Rogers.

We have read, with ennobling emotions, in our school-
boy days, of the reluctance with which the royal gardener

* Scipio. f Cowley.

} Biferique rosaria Paesti. — Virg.

17

of Sidon* left his pleasing toils, for the purpose of assum-
ing the burdensome cares of state. And it was from such
a scene that Horace might well have refused to part, to
enjoy the more intimate companionship of the master of
the world ; especially as it must have been alloyed with
the society of that proud but degenerate capital, to which
Jugurtha, not long before, had bidden farewell in lan-
guage less flattering than severe : “ Farewell, O cruel
and venal city, which requirest only a purchaser in order
to sell thyself and all which thou dost contain.” And it
was in the shades of those Salonian gardens, which his
own hands had made, that Dioclesian, the emperor, re-
ceived the ambassadors, who vainly strove to reinvest his
brows with

the hollow crown

That rounds the mortal temples of a king.

But perhaps one of the finest natural illustrations of the
interest which still clings to pursuits like these, long after
the heart is comparatively dead to all other human cares,
is to be found in the pages of the great novelist, whose
pictures appear to us less like efforts of imagination, than
delineations of nature herself in her invariable aspects.
The venerable Abbot of St. Mary’s, according to the tenor
of the tale, formed apparently for times less troublous
than those which then distracted his unhappy country,
resigns to a bolder spirit his conspicuous post in the van
of the armies of the church, now become literally and
carnally militant. He betakes himself, with cheerful res-
ignation, to the horticultural occupations of his earlier
and happier days. But his present pursuits and his former
condition and character necessarily involve him in the
plots and counterplots formed for the liberation of that

3

Abdolonymus.

18

fairest flower of Scotland’s beauty, whose uttered name
has so long awakened, and will forever awaken, every
romantic emotion in the human bosom; of that lovely
Mary, less a queen than a woman, whose melancholy
story, after the lapse of nearly three centuries, so stirs
the heart that all seems harsh and cruel, which sullen
history would dare to blend with the memory of her
beauty and her wrongs. Yet in spite of her loveliness
and misfortunes, the pious and transmuted Abbot, strick-
en, it is true, somewhat into the vale of years, struggles
hard between his allegiance to his queen, consecrated, as
it is, by his duty and devotion to the church, and his
affection for his garden-plots, which the rude feet of mes-
sengers and soldiers might trample ; for his fruits and his
flowers, — his bergamots, his jessamines and his clove-
gilliflowers. Let queens escape from prison, or kingdoms
pass away, so the season returns in its freshness to his
more intimate domain. u Ay, ruin follows us every where,”
said he, “ a weary life I have had for one to whom peace
was ever the dearest blessing. * * I could be sorry for
that poor queen, but what avail earthly sorrows to a man
of fourscore ? — and it is a rare dropping morning for the
early cole wort.”*

I know, indeed, of no picture more cheering than that
of old age, which the world, if it has robbed it of all
things else, has been unable to cheat of its relish for these
innocent pleasures. There is nothing to rival it, unless it
be the unalloyed delight of children in the midst of a gar-
den. How eagerly they scamper along the walks, and
stoop over the brightening beds ! At the very approach
of spring their hearts are bounding as at some unheard-of
joy. To them, the golden hours of summer are laden with

* The Abbot, Vol. II.

19

a rapture unknown to later years. With what exquisite
enjoyment they enter upon the minutest examination of
the most common things ! The flowers that are their
own make them rich with an almost untold wealth. The
springing grass to them is like the verdure of a fairy cre-
ation, and every bud a miracle in their soft and earnest
eyes.

And then what a host of illustrious names throng upon
our memories, and seem to sanctify these pleasant and
quiet scenes. I speak not now so much of the poets, who
have been forever the chosen interpreters of nature’s mys-
teries, and wanting whom, she might forever have uttered
oracles, sounding to the wise, but vague and indefinite to
the general apprehension. But the time would fail me to
tell the great and illustrious names of English history,
blended with every memory of these endearing pursuits :
of Wolsey, magnificent in all his enterprises; of Sidney,
conceiving the delicious dreams of “ Arcadia,” in his
ancestral bowers atPenshurst; of Wotton, flattering the
Yirgin Queen with his present of orange trees from Italy,
still flourishing in their original perfection ; of Temple,
whose heart so clung to the delightful recreations of his
leisure hours that he directed, by his will, that heart itself
to be buried beneath the sun-dial in his garden ; of Eve-
lyn, whose very name awakens every pleasing association
connected with rural pursuits, and whose noble sentences
are full of the heart and soul of one, who loved the soil
that bore him, with every emotion becoming a patriot and
a man ; of Raleigh, the graceful and gallant, learned and
brave ; of Bacon, in the language of Cowley,

Whom a wise king and Nature chose

Lord Chancellor of both their laws ;

of that Bacon, who would have fresh flowers upon his table

20

while he sounded the depths of divine and human philos-
ophy ; of Addison, the regenerator of a more manly taste
in gardening as well as literature; of Locke, the child-
like philosopher, exchanging his researches amongst the
labyrinths of the human mind for studies on a fairer page,
the open book of Nature, in her

hues,

Her forms, and in the spirit of her forms,

and who, unlike that illustrious Roman, to whom I have
referred, loved the society of children rather than perfect
solitude ; of Cowley and Pope, W alpole, Shenstone and
Cowper, and a hundred others, who have illustrated this
subject by their genius, and who are dear to us by every
kindred tie which connects us with the memorials of the
mind ; of Newton, conceiving, from a natural phenome-
non in his garden, of the mighty law which balances this
solid earth amidst the unshaken spheres ; or of Fox, turn-
ing without a sigh from that great assembly which he
had so often controlled by his sagacious eloquence, and
finding amidst his flowers and trees, at St. Anne’s Hill, a
happiness far more real, than during the long years, when
he had been the idol of popular supremacy, or for the
brief but dazzling hour, when, having finally grasped the
prize of a life-long ambition, he directed the destinies of
millions of his fellow men.

And oh, what glory and delight have the poets flung
around these delicious resting-places of the soul ! from
the time of the wise and royal poet of Israel, who tells us,
“ 1 made me gardens and orchards, and I planted in them
trees of all kind of fruits from the father of Grecian
minstrelsy, revelling in fancy in the gardens of Alcinous,
and the master of the Roman lyre, learned in all the sci-

Ecclesiastes,

21

ence of the generous pursuit ; from the sylvan shades of
Arqua, and every “ bosky bourne” which Boccacio so
exquisitely delineates, down to the grottoes and flower-
beds of Twickenham, and the almost sacred solitudes of
Olney. With what a charm the imagination insensibly
clothes the passage of those golden hours,

When Jonson sat in Drummond's classic shade !

What tree of our own planting is more familiar to us than
Pope’s willow, or Shakspeare’s mulberry, set by himself
in his garden at New Place ? And we have all of us, I
trust, devoutly execrated the barbarous hand, which so
recently despoiled this tree of trees, which, but for such
sacrilege, might have been visited by our children’s chil-
dren. And when we read, in one of the early biographies
of Milton, that “ a pretty garden-house he took in Alders-
gate street, at the end of an entry, and therefore the fitter
for his turn, by the reason of the privacy, besides that
there were few streets in London more free from noise
than that;”* we may well believe that there, rather than
in the shock of life, his serene imagination might lavish
all its riches amongst the flowery groves of Paradise. Yes !
it is the true poets who are with us, not only when the
sunshine nestles upon the mossy bank or beds of violets,
but who come to us alike when Nature herself is sad
and silent, and at the wintry fireside, pour the joy of
summer into our longing hearts. It is they who have
embroidered the virgin page with inwrought words of
every curious hue, —

Of sable grave,

Fresh green, and pleasant yellow, red most brave,

And constant blue, rich purple, guiltless white.

The lowly russet, and the scarlet bright j

Phillips.

22

Branched and embroidered like the painted spring j
Each leaf match'd with a flower, and each string
Of golden wire j * * * *

* * There seem to sing the choice

Birds of a foreign note and various voice 3
Here hangs a mossy rock 3 there plays a fair
But chiding fountain purled 5 not the air
Nor clouds, nor thunder, but are living drawn 3
Not out of common tiffany or lawn,

But fine materials which the muses know,

And only know the countries where they grow.

Attributed to George Chapman.

Without these glorious hues and forms, indeed, I know
not of what materials the literature of a nation could be
composed. And thus it is, that from the earliest age, and
amongst every people, their beauty and the spirit of their
beauty have haunted the soul of song. We know that in
all the countries of the East, flowers have forever consti-
tuted the symbols of sentiment and affection. The Greeks,
who appear to me, by no means, deficient in that element
of the romantic which the moderns are so ready to arro-
gate entirely to themselves, were passionate in their love
of flowers. From them have descended to us the custom
of their employment in triumphal pageants, and on occa-
sions of joyful or mournful ceremony; and they had
scarcely a familiar flower, of the garden or the field,
which their imagination had not woven into some lovely
legend, or made the subject of some fanciful metamorpho-
sis. By that most poetical of all people, the Hebrews,
they were employed as the vehicles of many a touching
and beautiful similitude. Of all the gorgeous company,
there are none so familiar to our tongues and hearts, as
the two which they have most distinguished with their
affectionate admiration. How the spirit of devotion itself
appears to spring at the very mention of the familiar
names of things so beautiful and pure !

23

By cool Siloam’s shady rill
How sweet the Lily blows ;

How sweet the breath, beneath the hill,

Of Sharon’s dewy Rose ! Hkber

I have thus endeavored, gentlemen, to discourse to you
in a manner, let me hope, not entirely inconsistent with
the spirit of the occasion. It has been my purpose to
avoid that course of technical remark, which, before such
an audience, might have proved presumptuous in me
rather than instructive to you. That scientific knowl-
edge, which the genius and enterprise of modern times
have brought to the pursuit of your liberal objects, may
be found in sources easily accessible. Of the dignity and
value of these objects it were unnecessary to speak. To
apply any elaborate eulogium to this pursuit were as rea-
sonable as to justify the great sun of Heaven himself, in
the fullness and glory of his illustrious beams. The
beautiful and costly edifice which you have erected is
the most fitting testimonial of your liberality, as its pur-
pose affords the surest evidence of a refined and intel-
lectual community. “God Almighty,” says Lord Bacon,
“ first planted a garden ; and indeed it is the purest of
human pleasures; it is the greatest refreshment to the
spirits of man ; without which buildings and palaces are
but gross handy- works ; and a man shall ever see, that,
when ages grow to civility and elegancy, men come to
build stately, sooner than to garden finely ; as if garden-
ing were the greater perfection.”

There can be, indeed, no question whatever that Horti-
culture, as a scientific pursuit, is of very recent date.
The most famous gardens of antiquity, we may be sure,
could enter into no sort of comparison with those, which
would now be considered as exhibiting the most moderate
pretensions, in point of the variety and beauty of their

24

productions. The hanging gardens of Semiramis have
been accounted amongst the wonders of the world. Yet
nothing can be more certain than that the “ Beauty of the
Chaldee’s excellency” could afford the royal mistress of
Assyria not a single nosegay to be compared with the
meanest of those, which constantly grace your elegant and
spirited exhibitions. Were it not for the apparent neces-
sity of the case, arising from the absence of intercommu-
nication between different people, it would be unaccount-
able how little progress was made, for long ages, in an
art so eminently attractive in itself, and so universally
interesting to mankind. It is true, that conquerors, at all
periods of time, have traversed vast portions of the world.
But, with the exception of the emperor Napoleon, the
pursuits of science, or the advancement of society, have
rarely entered into their schemes of personal or national
aggrandizement. But what vast improvements in this, as
in other respects, have resulted from the extending com-
merce of the world ! Of all the countless profusion of
fruits and vegetables which make the fertile face of Eng-
land “ as the garden of the Lord,” those indigenous to her
soil are of the most insignificant description. Few even
of those sweetest flowers, which her later poets have
woven into many a golden song, are of her own original
production. The oak, and some of the more common
forest trees, were all that her Druid groves could boast.
The very mulberry of Shakspeare was, in his day, a rare
exotic, and one of a large importation procured from the
continent by King James, in 1606. And if, as we are told,
in the times of Henry VII, apples were sold at one and
two shillings each, the red ones bringing the best price,
we may conclude, that when Justice Shallow treated Fal-
staff to a last year's pippin of his own graffing, it might
be an entertainment, at least, commensurate with the dig-
nity of such a guest.

25

It has been recently stated, that the average value of
the plants in a single horticultural establishment of Lon-
don, is estimated at a million of dollars. And oh, before
this magnificent result had been reached, from the com-
paratively trifling beginning, of a few centuries ago, what
infinite care and cost must have been expended ; what
love for the generous science must have been fostered and
encouraged ; what distant and unknown regions had been
visited and rifled of the glories of the plains and woods !
From solitary Lybian wastes and those paradises of Per-
sia, the Land of Roses, so eloquently described by Xeno-
phon; from

Isles that crown th' ^Egean deep,

to the boundless expanse of this bright heritage of ours ;
from Tartarian deserts to prairies of perpetual bloom;
from the fertile breadth of fields, beneath the southern
skies, to the strange continents of foreign seas and verdant
islands of the ocean,

* * * whose lonely race

Resign the setting sun to Indian worlds.

Combined with this adventurous spirit of modern dis-
covery, is another principle, which has proved eminently
favorable to the interests of horticultural science. The
higher social condition of those softer companions of our
garden- walks and labors and gentle cares ; the more
liberal position awarded them, under the influence of
advancing civilization ; our deeper interest in their moral
and intellectual culture, and our more generous regard for
their innocent gratification, have interwoven a thousand
graces and refinements, once unknown, amongst the
coarser texture of social life. Never, indeed, do they
enter so intimately into our joys, and griefs, and affec-
4

26

tions, as in gardens and amongst flowers. For them,
and not for ourselves, we reclaim the scattered blossoms
along the wildernesses of Nature ; we ask of them a more
tasteful care in the cultivation of their beauties, and for
their pleasure and adornment, we mingle their glorious
hues into innumerable shapes of grace and loveliness.

Welcome, then, for this, if for no other cause, the Hall
which you have thus prepared, and decorated and gar-
landed with the choicest treasures of the Spring. Long,
long may it stand, an evidence of no vain or idolatrous
worship. Unlike those grosser handiworks of cold and
glittering marble, which crowned, in ancient days, the
barren cliff, or looked, in lifeless beauty,

Far out into the melancholy main, —

but touched with the spirit of every gentle and noble
association, and consecrated by the soul of all our dearest
affections, welcome, to them and to us, be this Temple of
the Fruits and Flowers.